artificial gravity
by LYNSPIRE
Summary: it shouldn't take long to drown. but with the power on my fingertips and the blood in my veins, I know I am drowning still.
1. Chapter 1

**_ARTIFICIAL GRAVITY_**

This is a nonprofit work of fanfiction.

My character and plot belong to me. I do not own the My Hero Academia franchise, nor am I affiliated with Kohei Horikoshi.

* * *

 ** _THE NECESSARY END_**

'death, a necessary end, will come when it will come.'  
—William Shakespeare

* * *

Have you ever been in zero gravity? I have, though just once. Without weight or resistance, I was caught in the air, floating, as if nothing could touch me. I was in space— _no_ , I was still on planet earth—but it was if I had no weight. My unbuckled body hovered a few inches above my seat, my hands released the steering wheel and grasped at nothing, my hair drifted above my head just slightly; my battered vehicle was tumbling mid-air off the collapsing bridge in a free fall. In my weightless state I watched the sky through my clear sunroof window, a brilliant blue and mockingly heavenly on the day I should fall to my death.

I screamed, and I plunged.

Gravity hit me like a ton of bricks. I fell into my chair as my car landed into the water, wheels first. My head slammed into the steering wheel, and I reeled back, moaning, as blood immediately poured from the open wound and onto my finger tips. I couldn't breath, the wind was torn from my lungs on impact and my eyes were spinning in my sockets; my temples pounded and my ears screamed—as my car sank, sank, sank into indigo waters.

My side was burning, I must've broken my hip, or my leg, I couldn't tell but something was jutting out oddly under my skin and leaving me crippled in a rapidly sinking minivan. When my vision cleared a little more and I could hear past the ringing in my eardrums, I noticed the water that was soaking into my socks and seeping through cracks in my windshield. The seawater rushed in like it owned me—it entered cold and murky, stealing away the air that could save this fragile body. I could smell it, the dirty, polluted sea, foul and unclean. It was dark in the depths; I was sinking quickly.

I did what anyone else would do, I panicked. My mind was wild and unfocused, I must've had a really bad concussion, my bone was threatening to tear through my upper thigh, and I was going to die at the measly age of eighteen. My chest constricted in on itself and I twitched violently when the chilly water collected around my knees.  
My panic attack didn't last long, but long enough for the liquid to reach my waist and continue flooding the car. However, above me was the sunroof, a glass door to freedom, and on my feet were a pair of flimsy heels.

When I bent over I was crying, sobbing from the pain. Something else in my right limb snapped, and I felt it through my whole body, _pain, pain, pain_ , I saw black, mocking spots in my vision but I ripped the shoe off my left foot; I eased back into my original position. I ignored the tears streaming hopelessly down my bloody cheeks, mixing with the red and dripping on my white button-up.

I screamed again, guttural and desperate. _Slam, slam, slam_ , the shoe against the sunroof window. _Slam, slam, slam_ , not a dent in the glass. My shoulders shook and I futilely slammed the shoe again, only for it to ricochet back uselessly. With one more hit the heel broke off the sole, the cheap footwear now pointless, sending my only hope of escape down into oblivion. A sense of anguish, more so than pain, had taken rule of my heart. The water, so eerily murky and swimming with my blood, pooled under my chin; I lifted my neck to gulp the little remaining oxygen in my car. It was cold, it was dark, and I was alone—I took my last breath and the water slunk over my head.

The car was now full of water, and I was going to drown.

I had held my breath in a pool before, this wasn't like that. My lungs wanted so desperately to inhale, not caring if it was air or briny ocean. I was going to die; this realization sent shivers through my body once more. In moments I would float like the seaweed, nothing more than flesh and bones ready to decay in the currents and tides.

My knuckles were tearing and bleeding when I punched the unbreakable glass, and I knew this because the salt stung my hands like needles. My head was in the same state, the damage both inner and outer. I pushed my hands towards the window again, feeling for a crack, a hole, a break—feeling for the _switch_.

Adrenaline filled me with painful joy, and I clicked the small plastic piece.

It opened. The sunroof slid smoothly when the water pressure inside and outside the car had evened out; I pushed out of the roof, with weak, trembling forearms, the current pushing past me like a heavy wind.

I reached towards the surface, limbs moving like a ragged stuffed doll, mind losing focus faster than a child at a fun fair. Only there was no fun, only fear, fear enough to make me fight harder for the blurry light above me. I needed my head to break the surface before the strength could leave my body. I needed my movements to be calm and calculated—but my primitive reaction had taken control and I thrashed with no more mind than a monkey in a whirlpool.

My heart was hammering, increasing in intensity and speed, like a bird trapped in a cage. My throat seared in agony with the rising pressure of trapped air. My head pounded with panic, threatening to explode any second.

It wasn't fair. _Fuck_ , the last thing it was was fair, because I could see the sun shining through the hazy waters, teasing me with the world above—my friends, my job, my home, my little brother, everything I've ever worked for—and the last thing I saw was that godawful _blue_.

I couldn't grasp my own thoughts anymore. The content of my head was little more than a spiral of wool, which was slowly turning as it unravelled. One more revolution, and the final strand would release, to allow my fragile mind to slip through the gap, and float slowly up and away.

Now I was drifting, drifting, drifting down through a bed of gently swaying strands of seaweed; icy cold water was thrust up my nostrils, a stream cascaded into the back of my throat and nose, sending jets of pain through my body. Slowly, the commotion and chaotic sounds of the sea drowned out to a low hum, which buzzed in my ears, gradually muting into silence, one with the inky darkness.

I gave up on the screaming, on the thrashing, and allowed the water to sink my body beneath the sea. As my vision blurred out and my consciousness faltered, my mind became numb. As my feet touched down on the ocean floor, I exhaled my final breath, which rose in a fascinating stream of bubbles back to the surface from whence it came.


	2. Chapter 2

**_ARTIFICIAL GRAVITY_**

This is a nonprofit work of fanfiction.

My character and plot belong to me. I do not own the My Hero Academia franchise, nor am I affiliated with Kohei Horikoshi.

* * *

 _ **INACCURATE SKIN**_

'in inaccurate skin,  
among hologram trees,  
fresh from the tundra of dreams..'  
—Susan Firer

* * *

I woke up screaming in the dark. I couldn't open my eyes, I couldn't feel my body, and all I could do was let guttural sounds loose from choking lungs. I was drowning again, _I was drowning again_ —hands wrapped around me, sturdy, firm, but rubbery and damp, like slick gloves. There was light searing through my eyelids, and it burned, causing me to let out another cry that I couldn't hear. It smelt too strongly of blood, there was also a strong, alcohol-like odor of something that resembled hand sanitizer.

My hearing was much more dilluted than my smell, I could only make out muffled cries that were most likely my own. I could feel the hands more clearly now, they had a firm grip; they felt too big to be real. I was moved again, into someone else's' hands—they felt like _real_ hands—they were soft and much more gentle. There was more distorted speech, and a breath near my ear. Something wet dripped onto my bare stomach from the person above. Was it raining? Was someone crying?

I was too small. Fingers played with my flailing arms, fingers the size of my fist. I felt them when my own fingers clasped over them—a nail, a knuckle—yes, they were fingers. Yet, _my_ fingers weren't even the length of their pinkie nail, which I sized with my shaky palms.

I wasn't underwater, I was sucking in oxygen and it was _wonderful_. The air I was breathing blanketed me in a cool rush, yet each intake of breath was an effort for my feeble body. My cries died down, the hands stopped fiddling, and I rested, in the soft arms of the stranger whose grip was familiar in a way I cannot explain.

* * *

When I was taken from the place that smelled of medicine and Clorox wipes I still couldn't open my eyes. My ears had adjusted, taking in unfamiliar speech and soaking up what seemed to be a different form of language than the English from my home. Japanese, I deciphered, from the strange muffled accents. This place wasn't home—the people here weren't my family, and I wasn't myself.

No. I was a child again.

When I first realized it I had screamed, in the nursing room of the hospital I had been born—re-born—in. I gave the nurses a fright, as I hyperventilated in short, panicked breaths with a million thoughts running through my head, of which were having a race of who-could-freak-me-out-the-fastest. I was a child again. A new born child in a new _world_ —this fact scared me the most.

I had no idea where I was, who I was..and I was incapable of finding out everything I longed to know.

I was at home now, or my new home(It smelled unlike the household from my last childhood—not of cherries and cleaning detergent, but of flowers and dust). My father, the one with the rough hands and gruff voice, was gone most of the time. He left early in the morning and returned at dusk, smelling of sweat—and yes, dust. He smelt of stone, gravel, all the odors of uptured earth; while my mother, the opposite of him, had mixed aromas of poppies and soy sauce. She was gentle, a motherly figure that my child mind wished for dearly; I latched onto her every chance I got. In short, I was a mama's girl.

When they spoke it was mostly unintelligible. I understood not one lick of their language—it was complicated, with different vowels and accents on strange letters I had never heard before. I took my time, listening intently every time they spoke, as learning their language was a must.

I opened my eyes a few days after adjusting in my new home. It was painful for me, and too bright. My sight was undeveloped and an annoyance, as I could hardly find features in the blobs that were my parents' faces. However, my vision slowly got better; color was more distinguishable as time went on, and I was able to see every hue on the spectrum after five months in baby-sized hell.

Time went on slowly after that(having an adult mind in a small body really changes everything about a childhood). I remembered nothing about my baby years in my last life, but here, every second felt like the slow-mo setting on my old iphone.

I was also completely unable to do anything myself, which annoyed me to no end. When I wanted to sit up, I could only roll over. When I wanted to speak, all I could do was wail. Worse yet—I _drooled_. All over myself and everything around me, and I couldn't do a damn thing about it.

* * *

My first birthday was was completely uneventful, but it was also the day I learnt my name. I haven't been able to tell before—my parents referred to me as Ocha-chan, which didn't seem much like a name, and even when they spoke of my full name, I couldn't recognize it through the mumble and jumble of their sentences. They must've noticed I could recognize Ocha-chan more than anything else they called me, because that was how they referred to me.

I was a painfully normal child, according to them. I had started crawling at seven months old, walking at ten months, and gurgling things that resembled Japanese at eleven months. Despite the length of time I had spent in this new world, I had yet to know my location and my name. The only thing I could tell was that we lived near a construction sight, based on all the noise outside; in consequence, my mother hadn't taken me outside much. Anyways, today is my birthday, and we're going to the park.

My hair, a short length and a chestnut brown, was pulled into two messy pigtails near the bottom of my skull. My mother pulled a yellow t-shirt over my head, helped me into a small pair of worn overalls, and slipped a pair of sandals on my bare feet. When she finished dressing me, she guided me towards the floor-length mirror hanging on the wall, and I came face-to face with my reflection.

There was a girl in the mirror. She didn't look like me at all.

She was small, baby fat on her face and limbs, large, doe-like eyes blinking in tandem with mine. I stared at her and she stared at me; we played a game of 'Simon Says' in sync without a word coming from either of our mouths. I stuck out my tongue, she stuck out hers. I made a face, hers repeated my expression.

The girl in the mirror wasn't me.

My mother laughed when I frowned at myself. She tugged on my right wrist, pulling my frail body into the hallway.

"Come, Uraraka Ochaco!" she smiled down at me, the dimples on her cheeks upturned, "It's your birthday!"

Ah. So that was my name.


	3. Chapter 3

**_ARTIFICIAL GRAVITY_**

This is a nonprofit work of fanfiction.

My character and plot belong to me. I do not own the My Hero Academia franchise, nor am I affiliated with Kohei Horikoshi.

* * *

 _ **UNFAMILIAR PLACES**_

'I belong to places

that don't belong to themselves anymore.'

* * *

I dreamed in a language that I shouldn't have known. I saw memories that belonged to someone else, someone else who sank into the sea after an earthquake blew a bridge apart. I dreamed of a family that was hers and not my own. Then I awoke to _my_ family, a stay-at-home mom and a father who worked on building skyscrapers in Japan. I spoke Japanese as well as any three-year old, and I lived in a small apartment that smelt of poppies and dust.

That new world was mine. The old world was hers.

...or perhaps it was the other way around.

* * *

Preschool was painful. I was being shoved in a room with ten hyperactive kids for 4 hours, while my parents were at work. Shapes, numbers, and letters were shown to eager (or distracted) toddlers, who hobbled around the room and made undeveloped conversation with their classmates. I, being an adult in a child's body, stood silently in the doorway, gripping my mother's hand as if saying _don't make me stay here again please please please—_

My mother, thinking I was nervous, giggled and crouched to my height.

"Don't you fret, Ocha-chan, you'll be fine. It's just arts-and-crafts today, there's no need to be worried."

I frowned at her, my cheeks pinching, as if they weren't made for such a negative expression. "I am worried." I stated, as sharply as my high-pitched voice could manage, "I no trust kids with scissors."

This sent my mother into another fit of giggles, but she quickly composed herself and said her goodbyes, turning and leaving me behind.

Our teacher, a kind woman who was much too sweet for such a hellish job, took my hand with a careful smile and guided me to the low table in the center of the brightly-painted classroom. The kids on the pillows next to me were fiddling with glue and messily-cut shreds of construction paper, their hands unsteady but their eyes full of happiness in such a simple task. I had forgotten that children had a tendency to find wonder and entertainment in the strangest things(like sticking red papers to blue ones and calling them a pair of rainbow sneakers).

"What we making?" I asked the adult whose hand was still in mine.

"What _are_ we making," she corrected my butchered japanese before continuing, "we're making paper creations of our hero costumes!"  
She let go of my hand and I gazed at the materials before me, a pair of little scissors and some stick glue.

Hero costumes? An odd craft for sure but not too far fetched for a preschool project. However, I had heard the word 'hero' from not just the preschool teachers but from my parents too, saying it was a profession for nobel people who save the big cities from villains and the like. It confused me, and once I had thought about it, I had realized my mother never ever played the news channel on our television (she wasn't a fan of the violence) and I didn't know much about the surrounding world at all.

Another thing worth mentioning about that word was the eccentric traits that some people displayed. My parents were fairly normal looking—brown hair, brown eyes for them both-the only thing out of place was the seemingly permanent blush on my mother's cheeks. However, I had seen some odd people around town when traveling the sidewalks in my stroller.

Even at that moment I found some crazy genes in the people in my preschool; the boy across the table from me had bright yellow eyes, one toddler had antennas, and our teacher's hair was indigo blue(she had said it was natural).

So, unable to contain my child-like curiosity, the words spilled from my mouth.

"Miss, why do people look so different and have strange attributes?"

My teacher's eyes widened in surprise (attributes is a pretty big word for a three-year old to know) before answering my question in a authoritative manner, "That's because people have quirks, Uraraka-chan."

Now _that_ was a new word.

"Quirks?" It rolled off my tongue in a strange way. "What is a quirks, Miss?"

"What is a _quirk_ ," she corrected, _god, that was getting annoying_ , "a quirk is something 80% of today's population have—a sort of power, or ability, you can say. Children can gain it at birth or it will develop around the age of four, at the latest."

She spoke a little fast for me to follow but I soaked in every word like a sponge. "What are quirks like?" I questioned, perhaps a little loud, as the whole classroom seemed to go quiet. This didn't last long, however, the children exploded into excited, high-pitched yelling.

"I can move stuff with my mind!" shouted a young girl with a ponytail, "except the stuff can't be big or it hurts."

"Oh!" Someone burst, "guess what, I can make things catch on fire when I glare at them!"

Their crafts now forgotten, the toddlers around me erupted into boastful shouts about their quirks, bouncing about while my teacher—who was chasing all the scissors that were gravitating towards a young boy's fingertips—screamed commands for them to 'stop using their quirks as it wasn't allowed in school'.

I sat there for a while, staring. A paint can flew past my head, someone spilt glue all over the table, and my teacher looked as red as a tomato, the vessels in her head ready to burst. Once again, my sympathy went to her.

The flurry of flying objects were eventually returned to the table, after another aid walked in and took control of the chaos my teacher had unintentionally caused. The day continued smoothly after that, filled with projects on the history of heros and the building of our city. However, my teacher had never gotten to finish her explination of the topic of 'quirks', and I desperately wanted to know more. In consequence of my curiosity, I found myself tugging at her pastel dress when my mother was due to pick me up.

The woman looked down at me, her grey eyes tired and drooping like umbrellas sagging with trapped rainwater(she reminded me of my mother, the mother before, in the place where rainwater wasn't a thing to be feared and people weren't destined to be heros or villians).

"Miss," I questioned, my gaze not leaving hers, "what does the other 20% of the population have?"

"They," she returned, "are quirkless."

* * *

My mother lowered me into the bath with such careful precision it seemed she wasn't moving me at all. I remembered the first time she had bathed me in that tub—she had plopped me in too quickly, I screamed something awful—she deduced it was a fear I had been born with, a fear of the rain pattering on the window panes, the deep dark ocean in the painting in the hall, and the little ceramic bathtub(only filled halfway because I couldn't let the water reach my chin or I'd _sink and sink and sink_ ).

Her hands were careful and smooth in my hair, calloused from daily use but she had the most calming touch when strands of damp chestnut hair were woven through her fingers, slick with shampoo.

I was lost in my thoughts again, thinking about the strange people on the streets, who walked along in silence without so much glancing at the boy on the crosswalk with the shark head and the girl on the park bench purple skin. Because there, that was normal.

Then I pondered about the quirk doctor. The man I had seen just a few weeks after that confusing day at preschool, the man who seemed just as cold and unwelcoming as the sketchy convinience mart down the street(that never had any customers). He didn't talk a lot when taking an x-ray of my toes("Why my foot?" I asked, "That's how we know," was all he said), but he mentioned my quirk would develop fully in a year or so, a little later than average, but not uncommon in young toddlers. My quirk may be powerful, he had mentioned, it may be good enough for a hero.

What is a hero? Did he mean the heroes in the streets, who destroyed buidlings when caught in the moment of the melodramatic action and surrounded themselves in people and popularity? The ones who defeated villians(but not all of them deserved it, the boy on the news was starving to death, he needed to steal to survive, and he was only twelve), the ones who flounced about dressed in silly costumes, the ones who showed off their strange, superhuman abilities that seemed to be wherever I looked?

What even were these abilities? Quirks could have been a human evolution, and those with them a more superior species than the species of human I had last been. Yet, there are still 'quirkless' people in this world, distinguished by a joint in the pinky toe. Perhaps humans were still in an evolutionary stage between ordinary and normal? If so, I could've just been a hundred or more years in the future. Re-born in the future. Does that happen to everyone who is reincarnated? Does a deceased human wake up again in a future world that is not their own? When they die again, does such a cycle continue?

Was I an abnormally, since I remembered my past life? Was I a plaything for whoever was out there, or was I something more? Yes, maybe I was overthinking things—

but what if I wasn't?

While I was having my existential crisis, my mother watched on in interest. I sat there in the bath, ignoring the bubbles and the little floating duck, and instead staring in deep concentration on the hands that had never felt like my own—I suddenly noticed the bumps growing on my little fingertips, pinker than the rest of my pale, pale skin.


	4. Chapter 4

**_ARTIFICIAL GRAVITY_**

This is a nonprofit work of fanfiction.

My character and plot belong to me. I do not own the My Hero Academia franchise, nor am I affiliated with Kohei Horikoshi.

* * *

 _ **LONG TIME**_

'That was what we call a long time ago  
because it has to be called something.'  
—Carla Panciera

* * *

Suddenly everything I touched would fly. The bedsheets, the stuffed animals, my fork, my spoon, and even my clothes would fly up when I brushed them with my fingertips. There it was, the quirk that somehow made me a hero.

After my quirk appeared—when I graduated from kindergarten—I felt foreign, alien, _uncomfortable_ in my own skin. I was subdued, a quiet child, who did what she was asked and nothing more.

In elementary I was considered strange. Too strange, even in a world such as this. Perhaps it was my face—which held tightly to my cheeks, or the fact that I wore little grey gloves to school every day, but all of that aside, I made not a single friend and instead was at the top of my class in terms of academics. This caused jealousy in its finest form; in consequence, no one dared speak to the girl who never spoke(instead, my classmates communicate with tongue-sticks and haughty glares).

I didn't mind that. So I went through elementary at our local public school with no motivation, nor a sense of direction. I just filled out worksheets, I bubbled in answers, I stared at texts in big books and each day I felt like another part of me was drowning.

My father was off on work trips more often. I hardly saw him, and due to the loss of pay in his failing business my mother had to pick up two extra jobs in order to keep our home(sometimes it was tense in our apartment; they would sit without a word, the only sounds their heavy breaths and the shuffling of their crumpled papers—they were too tired and too overwhelmed to ask me about my day and confront me about why I hadn't made any friends).

Today was one of those days. I sat at the dinner table, legs shifting back and forth in the space between the chair and the floor. My mother took a sip of her drink, her once clear chestnut eyes bleary and clouded. My father took a swig of his beer, not before rubbing the growing stubble on his chin. They swallowed. I watched.

No one said a word.

"Ochaco," my father called to the silence, and I looked up from my dangling legs to face him(though I was in fifth grade I was still quite small). "When you graduate elementary, why don't you work at the cafe with your mother?"

My mother, who looked lifeless just a moment before, shot up with newfound energy, appalled. "Why—! You can't make her work, she's too young!"

"I'm not against it," I interrupted, my child voice still obnoxiously soft and high pitched, "if it makes your lives easier, then I'll do it."

My mother smiled at me, but I could tell it was fake because her lips were wobbling at the edges and even her dimples looked unsure. "It's fine, Ochaco," she replied, an edge in her voice, "you don't have to do that. You're our child, not our tool."

I frowned at her. "If I worked for you of my own will, it would not mean I was a tool—"

"Well, she has to be useful for something."

My mother turned around so fast her hair whistled like a whip. Suddenly she was screaming at him, not an afraid kind of scream but a _loathing_ scream, her speech so loud and jumbled that I could hardly make out her words. My father stood and tried to reason, but the damage had already been done; there was glass on the floor where my mother knocked over his bottle, then they were both yelling, a tidal wave of a storm that was long since due.

Tears seeped from a tired woman's eyes as she pulled at her hair, homemade dinner spilled near his feet, so many clangs and clatters and crashes and I was _drowning_ in it.

I didn't know what to do for my parents. Even they were foreign to me then—just faces in my home that seemed like ghosts. They had spent every moment trying to keep us together and I let everything fall apart. Sometimes I wonder if it was my own selfishness that destroyed my family(no— _her_ family, the girl in the mirror).

(Maybe I should've said something, started a conversation, lightened the mood? Asked them if I could help them, told them someday I'd support them with everything I'd make? Maybe I should've wondered about their day, gave them smiles and kisses, acted as the good, naive, happy little daughter they should've been blessed with?)

When I had looked in the mirror one night (after my parents started arguing and something crashed and hit a wall) I felt that repulsive pit in my stomach grow— _I wasn't supposed to be here at all._

In my old life it had been easy. I had a mother and father in a middle-class society, we lived peacefully in a small town and survived off of what we had. My brother was born a year later than me, we would play together and go to school together and do practically everything together—so I always had someone to rely on. But here—here was so much different. The people were different, the place was different, the language was different, hell, even the _species_ was different.

The reason my parents were foreign was because they weren't my parents. The body I resided in wasn't my body. There was no one to rely on, no one to pour out my feelings to, no one to hold in the dark.

No one knew me. No one knew the _real_ me. All they saw was the girl in the mirror.

* * *

My mother stood in the kitchen, steadily chopping lettuce in a rhythmic and graceful pattern. Above her the ceiling light blinked out periodically, and the clock clicked with each second on the wall. Somewhere between the chop of the knife and the flicker of the lamp I would finish a math equation, and somewhere between the lift of the knife and the tick of the minute I would move to the next. In this pattern my mother and I did not speak or break our strange mechanical movements, only existing in each moment to finish our jobs as efficiently as possible. Though I was... _me_ , I held similar traits to her. We were alike, for better or for worse.

"What are your plans for high school?" My mother asked, as her knife thumped against the cutting board and sliced through a wedge.

"I'm not entirely sure." I replied, scratching my cheek with the backside of my pen.

"Have you ever considered hero work?" She added, brushing aside the shredded lettuce to start on the tomatoes, "Your quirk would be very useful for rescue missions. Like that pro hero..what's his name..Thirteen?"

I scribbled on the worksheet before answering, "I suppose."

"You have one year to decide, but that's not as much time as you think, Ochaco." her gaze was on me again, the tomato on the counter now in finely cut quadrants, "I emailed you all of those scholarship forms, too. You can decide on any of those."

"Yeah," I whispered, scanning the last problem with a careful eye.

"You're very bright, Ochaco. I'm sure you can make it into a private school on a scholarship, if you try. Though I do wish you had taken more clubs and elective courses. Those give the schools more to look at then grades, you know?"

I almost mentioned _I had been working all day after school in a run down cafe so I didn't have time_ , but I thought better of it and slipped my homework into my binder.

"Yeah." I repeated.

My mother sighed, her breath as soft and vulnerable as it had always been. For a second I thought she gave up, and my hormonal teenage brain rejoiced. I pushed those feelings aside and drove my attention to the pot of dying poppies on the windowsill.

"Just don't leave town, ok?" She said finally, "I'll be upset if you move out."

"Like Dad?"

For once, she didn't answer.


	5. Chapter 5

**_ARTIFICIAL GRAVITY_**

This is a nonprofit work of fanfiction.

My character and plot belong to me. I do not own the My Hero Academia franchise, nor am I affiliated with Kohei Horikoshi.

* * *

 ** _ENTIRELY_**

'If we could get the hang of it entirely  
it would take too long.'  
—Louis Macneice

* * *

I never expected I would be a hero. I never had a thought in my mind that I might work in that field, study in that field, fight in that field—being a hero was something toddlers would dream of then forget about when they found a proper job and got married and had kids; then the cycle would start all over again.

That's what I thought would happen to me.

There was an exception, however, and that was my quirk. I had drilled it and mastered it until it too became a part of my unfamiliar body.

It was as if my mother expected me to be a hero, since my quirk was so propitious. To become a hero and make money and save her like I promised when I was a child.

All she wanted was money, it was all she focused on. Every minute, every second, she was working, so I supposed it was only fair. Supporting our little family was a lot more difficult with Dad gone.

"Hero work is dangerous," my mother once told me, after turning on the news on a Sunday afternoon, "but if you want to strive towards that goal, I'll support you!"

My mother was a lot different back then. Her hair was healthy and long, her eyes were bright and hopeful, her hands were warm and her gestures were comforting.

Now, it seemed like becoming a hero was a requirement, as finding a good job was.

"You being a hero could make us some good money," she encouraged one morning, before the sun had yet to rise, "I'll be able to take more breaks, and we could afford to eat out on your birthday."

It sounded nice, but I didn't really care about eating out on my birthday.

Then again, I never really cared about anything at all. I was unsure as to why, but it probably had something to do with the whole situation feeling like a nasty nightmare—or in better wording, a sick joke.

However, something changed that.

Oddly enough, it was something I despised in my last life, but came to love in my new life. In summary, I started working out.

I began running on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. I began running on Fridays, too, then I began running every day of the week. Soon the slap of my feet on the pavement felt like another pattern, so I added it to my daily routine and started running everywhere—and I would frequently get dress coded for wearing my sneakers to school.

Though the exercise itself was for my mother's plans for me, running helped. My legs were now a part of me, the wind was comforting on my skin; the sweat trickling down my neck felt real, and when I ran, my new life felt less like a nightmare and more like a dream.

So I kept running, every second, every moment—every day I ran away.

* * *

Eighth grade passed by with patterns that seemed endless. Yet for some reason, unlike everything I had done in my few years in my new life, my actions in that particular grade didn't feel futile. I studied until I was in the top of my class, I ran until I had run out of sidewalk, I worked until I could afford eating out for my birthday—and, like a phase, my inability to get motivated slowly faded away.

So junior high came to an end. The last day of school dragged on and suddenly I was nostalgic (because how would I manage taking a new route to a new school?) yet I was prepared, I was confident; I had stopped fiddling with my fingers and instead I scanned the list of school applications, flipping past public schools and private schools galore, until I found the highschool of everyone's dreams.

I signed the UA registration form with pride.

* * *

I was unsure if I was nervous or not. Before, the transition between junior high and high school was never very stressful, but in the new world, a few years in high school seemed to give a student their future.

In that moment, I saw plenty of people who were shaking in their polished school shoes. Though I stood in my uniform and dirtied sneakers, I easily morphed into the crowd of private school graduates(through the occasional public-school student was in the mix).

Some looked up in awe at the building before them, some froze in place in fear and anticipation. (Not unlike a certain plain-looking boy to my right.)

I shrugged my brown coat a little closer to my chest, and tightened my spiky ponytail. Adjusting my clothing, though still a nervous habit, was better than playing with my fingers.

I continued on my way, until, quite abruptly, the plain boy nearby lost his footing, and tripped, arms outstretched.

I reached my hand out before I could think, my quivering fingers barely brushed his shoulder. The boy stopped mid-air, and before he could react, I chuckled softly at the flabbergasted look on his face.

Gently, I released my quirk, and his feet touched the ground. (I noticed his odd choice in footwear—bright red high-tops? Though, I couldn't be one to talk with my black and white thrift store shoes.) He seemed ready to pee his pants, and his face was growing rapidly pinker. I decided my very presence was dangerous in some way because the he looked like he was going to implode.

"Sorry," I mentioned bluntly, thank god my voice was cooperating because the whole ordeal was sort of embarrassing, "but..it'd be bad luck if you fell, right?"

I smiled at him, but it was probably pathetic because he just started sweating more. I turned and walked on, giving him a wave with the back of my hand.

A little over a week ago, we had taken the written exam for this school in stuffy rooms with white lights and blue-painted walls. Today we were walking into what seemed to be a colosseum of teens, stamping their feet and chattering in anticipation, eyes on the stage full of flashing lights.

It was crowded, and I was slightly overwhelmed. First, a woman at the doorway shoved a paper in my face, full of funky drawings and symbols that the I tastefully shifted away from. Then, after I was assigned my seat, I stumbled into the auditorium, finding myself in a position far too close to the front of the stage. I rubbed the smooth black fabric of my tights while the other examinees filed in.

An hour dragged on for what felt like an eternity, until finally, the lights dimmed, and the pro hero Present Mic pranced onstage.

The response was immediate. A few hoots and cries started up, a few fangirl squeals—and soon, the entire theatre had erupted into a welcoming and exciting applause. Though, a certain tense atmosphere still wandered unpleasantly throughout, and the outburst died off as quickly as it had come.

"WELCOME!" The blonde man boomed, and I watched as two ginormous projectors flicker to life on the walls near the stage, "ONE AND ALL, TO MY LIVE SHOW!"

I scooted the edge of my creaky plush seat, ignoring the well-dressed teen next to me, who seemed mildly annoyed by my constant fidgeting.

"Now pay close attention, dear listeners!" The pro hero continued, moving his arm as if he was in a DJ booth, "We'll test your mettle with a practice run—in the district you have taped to your chair!"

The screen displayed the arenas, and I turned to find the letter _A_ on a sticky note, crookedly stuck onto the back of my seat. I took it in my hands, staring at the sloppy English letter with conflicting emotions running through my head.

Examinees weren't allowed to attack other examinees, right?

"—sprinkling a large number of 'villains' on the battlefield," the hero blurted happily, and I jumped in my seat, realizing how much I had missed, "they'll appear in different varieties, therefore giving different points!"

The screen lit up with a small character destroying three types of 'monsters' earning a different amount of points from each one. Most of the crowd didn't know who the character was, but, ironically, the character was one I recognized from my video-game filled childhood in my last life. Mario-Cart, to be specific.

Present Mic enthusiastically swiped his hand towards the projected screen. "You all need to use your quirks to dispatch those villains—and your goal, dear listeners, is to earn a high score!"

He winked up to the audience, grinning, as a murmur of held-back nervousness filled the building.

"Excuse me!" Someone shouted authoritatively from behind me, "May I ask a question!"

It seemed to me as more of a demand than a request, but Present Mic let him go on. The sharp-looking boy straightened out, shifting his hand towards the paper (that I had proceeded to ignore earlier, during my run-in with the woman at the entrance) in a robotic fashion.

"Displayed on the handout, there are clearly four types of villains listed! Such an error would be the _height_ of embarrassment for a top-tier national academy of U.A.'s caliber!"

I made a mental note to avoid this boy.

He continued, no less in volume, "The reason we are here today is because we seek guidance on the path to becoming _model_ heroes!"

The boy was rich, obviously, by the pristine suit adorning his tense-postured figure, and politeness only displayed in a proud successor of some sort. My eyes drifted back to the district sticky-note in hand, while the confident examine scolded a young teen near the middle rows.

"Okayyy, thanks for the input, examine 7111!" Present Mic interrupted, amused. "The fourth villain you'll encounter is zero point villain, or an _arena trap_!"

I grumbled, annoyed by the outburst and the odd obstacles I had yet to encounter. The stranger next to me glared, as the tapping in my foot only became more prominent. I ignored her.

The pro hero said a few more words, before dismissing the massive crowd—though I took a moment more to finger my sticky note with shaky digits.

I felt a slight sting, and watched, oddly untroubled, as a sliver of blood beaded up from the paper cut tracing my palm.


End file.
